I'm just fighting some stability issues with the serial communications for my Rainbowduino solution, but as far as soldering is concerned you may be able to get away without any as long as you can find a way of connecting the LED strips to the Rainbowduino outputs.

Serial comms is done via a USB Uart connector that plugs into the rainbowduino at one end and a USB cable at the other. I'm powering through a PC power molex, but a JST connector and power supply could be purchased along with the Raunbowbuino from Seeed that would mean no soldering for the power. I'll have a think about how you could go about connecting the LED strips easily without soldering - I'm using the RGB strips from DealExtreme and they come with a connector on the end, so it may be possible to somehow use pin headers to connect these up.

I would like to know if there is a way to intergrate this with atv or is that far reaching

technocoma Wrote:Sorry I still haven't written up a guide. Haven't actually done anything with them for a while but have now built up a PCB for it now and am able to have 8 channels (LED strips) instead of 4.

I will be re-setting it all up at the weekend with new LED strips (to get rid of the dip in the middle) as the old ones were really just a prototype.

So while i'm doing it I shall take some pictures and hopefully be able to explain how it all works

i would add 600ohm resistors between the Hsync(pin 13 to pin 5) and Vsync(pin 14 to pin 10) pins to trick the computer that a VGA monitor is connected

edit: i would merge all these ideas:

VGA to ULN200 LED driver to RGB strip(spark fun COM-10261). IF this works, then there is no reason why you cant substitute the VGA for the RGB component cables. IM not sure if the Apple TV 1 can dual output, but if it can then in theory you can run the ATV1 via HDMI to your tv and run this circuit out of the ATV1's RGB components and then you have a simple ATV1 solution.

To take it a little further: use a reverse of this http://www.monoprice.com/products/produc...1&format=2 to take the ATV2 HDMI...sort of break out the RGB of it by reverse engineering this monoprice converter and then run the HDMI back to the tv. Not sure signal quality would suffer though.

also im also not sure if some receivers can dual output. Then there would be no need to dual output nor breakout either ATV if you run it into a receiver.

markhoney Wrote:I'm just fighting some stability issues with the serial communications for my Rainbowduino solution, but as far as soldering is concerned you may be able to get away without any as long as you can find a way of connecting the LED strips to the Rainbowduino outputs.

Serial comms is done via a USB Uart connector that plugs into the rainbowduino at one end and a USB cable at the other. I'm powering through a PC power molex, but a JST connector and power supply could be purchased along with the Raunbowbuino from Seeed that would mean no soldering for the power. I'll have a think about how you could go about connecting the LED strips easily without soldering - I'm using the RGB strips from DealExtreme and they come with a connector on the end, so it may be possible to somehow use pin headers to connect these up.

bobo1on1 Wrote:That circuit will just turn the leds on most of the time, what you need to do is pass the vga signals through a lowpass filter, then convert that voltage into a proportional current for the leds.

That being said, you won't get any brightness or color adjustments, which you definitely need, without it most of the video content will look like white light.

why? why filter then pull current? and as far as color and brightness...maybe you could use the TV's/monitors brightness and color controls?

If we wanted to get into that then use two LM324 chips and apply both low pass filtering and V to A conversion with some added resistors. Im not saying this is the BEST solution but its definitely easier and less expensive then having to have an arduino.

bobo1on1 Wrote:How does adjusting the tv's brightness and color change the vga output?

yes youre correct...my mistake. youwould have to play with color settings on the graphics card inself. This obviously wouldnt work for apple tvs. either way im still unsure of the filtering and converting to current as the ULN 200 darlington pair should take the analog voltage just fine. Maybe use the op amp as a buffer...or opto isolate the signal from the transistor. still seems like a cheap and quick way to produce this same effect...albeit if you have a dual video card setup